


c'mon angel, c'mon darling, let's exchange the experience

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: "fuck you calling me god like it doesn't turn you on just to say it", Alternate Universe, John Winchester is a rabid dog he should be beaten to death with a stick, M/M, Repression, awkward family dinner, fleabagnatural, title from Kate bush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-26 20:27:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30111558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Because, despite the shitty music and the fluorescent lights flickering above, despite the sorry leading man and the distinct lack of chicks, despite the copious blood— this was a love story.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Ruby/Sam Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 64





	c'mon angel, c'mon darling, let's exchange the experience

**Author's Note:**

> based on this Tumblr post: https://gaysie.tumblr.com/post/642520457267052544/lebanon-shouldve-actually-been-like-the-dinner

The water comes out of the tap brackish and rusty at first, but Dean gives it a moment and it starts to run clear. He dampens a fistful of paper towels and hands them to the waitress, who thankfully isn’t fussing about the fact that they’ve taken refuge in the men’s bathroom or the fact that she was just elbowed in the face. She just mutters, “Thanks,” and presses the already-disintegrating paper towels against her injury.

Dean splashes some water onto his own bloody face. He doesn’t wince. It barely hurts. It doesn’t hurt. Lord knows it’s not the first— or second, or probably fiftieth— time he’s been punched in the kisser.

Over a slightly-tinny rendition of “Tender Is the Night” and the distant clamor of cutlery and conversation, Dean hears a voice, hoarse and uncertain. “Are you okay?”

Right. The goddamned priest.

“Fine,” Dean calls out.

“They, um— they left. Sam and the others.”

Of course.

In the mirror, Dean tries a hollow grin— the same one he perfected when he was sixteen years old, charming and cocksure and doomed. At least whatever good looks he might be said to possess haven’t been ruined tonight.

Because, despite the shitty music and the fluorescent lights flickering above, despite the sorry leading man and the distinct lack of chicks, despite the copious blood— this was a love story.

*

Dean Winchester hasn’t seen his brother in nearly four years.

Sam has been in California; Dean has not. Sam has been in Stanford, finally learning how to properly pronounce all those words he learned in books. He’s seen the ocean. He’s sought his own gold rush. He’s been at the edge, the last place in America that the setting sun touches, in a disconcerting paradise. Sam hasn’t been homesick, Dean guesses.

Dean has been in Kansas; Dean has been turning the collar of his borrowed jacket (too broad in the shoulders) up against the cold. He’s been at dinner with his parents every Sunday. He’s been calculating his next shot in an endless game of pool; he’s been batting his eyelashes and lying through his teeth so that the bartender will give him his keys back. He’s been mowing the lawn. He’s been helping John clean his guns. He’s been skulking out of stranger’s beds at dawn. He’s been driving west, eighty miles an hour, until he loses the radio signal to static. Then he turns right back around. Dean has been a good son; Dean has been home.

Then last week Mary called and invited him to dinner. She said that Sam was flying back, and that she and John had important news to share with the two of them. It was half a polite request and half a guild trip, until John had said in the background, “You’ll be there, right, son?”

“Yes, sir.”

Now here they are, a happy family all gathered together (except for Adam, thank God). John at the head of the table and Mary to his right. Sam sits directly across the table, so Dean can get a good look at him. He’s robust, slightly suntanned. He’s holding hands with his girlfriend, Ruby, whom Dean only met ten minutes ago but he can already tell that she’s a bitch. She made some sly remark about Dean not knowing which knife and fork to use— and sure, they were at the second-best restaurant in Lawrence, but second-best in Lawrence still didn’t mean anything special, and couldn’t she tell that Dean was wearing his nicest flannel? And there’s practically no grease under his fingernails.

Beside him is a stranger— not much older than Dean himself, if he had to guess. He’s quiet. Occasionally their elbows brush. Dean has no idea who the fuck he’s supposed to be.

Maybe John will illuminate this, since he’s clearing his throat, about to make some kind of announcement. “It’s real good to have both you boys here,” he says. “I know we’ve had our—”

“Disagreements,” Mary says.

“We can all be stubborn. But that’s a Winchester trait. We’re a family, and the important thing is that family belongs together.”

Their dad has a way of delivering speeches like they’re all about to go die bloody for a glorious cause. It can be inspiring, if a little intense. He goes on, “Your mother and I want to make an announcement.”

Dean catches Sam’s eye from across the table. It’s automatic, despite four years and two thousand miles and the awkwardness of their initial reunion (all tight smiles and hearty claps on the back). Now Dean can tell exactly what his brother is thinking, just from the slight quirk of his brow, which is, _Jesus, are they finally getting a divorce?_ Dean almost wants to challenge Sam to a wager about it right here and now.

But it turns out that would be yet another bet Dean would’ve lost, since Mary says, “Your father and I have decided to renew our vows. Good times or bad, richer or poorer, sickness or health. You know. Father here will be officiating—”

She smiles at the guy sitting next to Dean. And before he can shove some bread into his mouth to stop himself from speaking, Dean’s repeating in disbelief: “ _Father?”_

“Yes, Father Castiel,” Mary says.

The priest chooses to ignore Dean’s imprudence. “It’s an honor to help with the ceremony.”

“Dad, you’re really agreeing to this?” Sam asks, incredulous.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that normally you don’t go for the sentimental stuff.”

“Well, sure. But it’s important to your mother.”

“I had a certain list of demands,” Mary says. Mercifully, before she can really divulge what the rest of these demands are, the waitress appears. She’s blond, sullen, wearing too much black eyeliner. She asks what drinks they’d like. John orders a beer, so Dean asks for the same kind, and then John tries to order for Mary, who drowns and insists that _actually_ she’d like some wine. The priest— Castiel— says he’ll have some as well. Then the waitress turns toward Sam and Ruby. The bitch says, “None for us, thanks.”

“We’ll just have water with—”

“A dash of lemon.”

As the waitress jots this down, John asks, “Sam, you haven’t turned into a lightweight, have you?”

“No. Ruby and I don’t drink.”

“Why not?” Castiel asks. Just like that, point-blank.

After the slightest awkward pause, Sam answers, equally boldfaced: “Because our family has a history of substance abuse issues.”

“Bullshit,” John says, and Dean thinks that the waitress can’t bring those drinks fast enough.

“I’m not condemning anyone, Dad. I just… don’t want to be the guy passing out on my couch after one too many. Except one too many is always every night.”

“A man deserves a drink after a hard day’s work.”

“Sure. Whatever. I just prefer to keep my mind sharp. To face my problems head on. And Ruby’s been very supportive of that.”

“I try,” Ruby says, and then the two of them are squeezing hands and simpering at each other. It’s utterly heartwarming. Dean decides that this would be an excellent time for a smoke break. As he gets up, Mary gives him a disapproving _tsk,_ and sure Dean feels guilty but he heads outside to the alleyway regardless. He leans his head against the rough brick exterior of the second-best restaurant in Lawrence, closes his eyes, and exhales. He can hear the highway, just out of sight, and the sound of it is comforting. It’s the only lullaby he’s ever known.

When he returns, his family (along with the priest) is toasting Sam’s LSAT score. Dean is proud of his brother, of course he is— who was it that slept through the infinite nights when Sam kept a flashlight shining under his bedsheet to read past midnight, who was it that went out with Sam into the waist-high grass to find a caterpillar to put in a jar with holes drilled in the lid for Sam’s science project on metamorphosis, who was it that reread all the underlines and annotations Sam left in the copy of _Cat’s Cradle_ that Dean lent him? Dean’s smile is genuine. But John is boasting about how they always knew Sam would achieve great things, and Dean is half-expecting someone to bring out the proverbial fatted calf, and no one has asked him a question in forty-five minutes—

“So what do you do?” Castiel asks.

He turns his whole body toward Dean as he speaks. It’s a heady thing, to feel like he thinks Dean is worthy of his unblinking blue gaze.

“Um. I run an auto repair shop.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, with a family friend. He teaches me about the books and stuff when he has free time.”

“How is Bobby these days?” Mary inquires.

“Good. It’s going good.” His mother’s smile remains wary and almost pitying, though, and the accomplishment is so paltry compared to a 176 on the LSAT. Dean finds himself pathetically repeating: “It’s good. Honestly. _Honestly_.”

Goddamn, he needs another cigarette.

He’s badly startled when he glances up at the constellations and sees that Castiel has suddenly also materialized in the alleyway— hands in his pockets, asking for a light. “Are you even allowed to smoke?” Dean jokes.

“Yes,” he replies evenly.

Dean ends up passing him the cigarette that he’s just started to smoke, straight from between his lips. The priest doesn’t seem to mind. Dean doesn’t ask himself why he chose to do that, he just _does._ It’s easy to ignore the why— he merely flicks the thought away like ash.

Castiel starts to ask him, “Do you and your family get together often—”

But Dean is already in motion, walking back to the restaurant. His hand on the door when Castiel says, “Fuck you, then.”

There’s no malice in his words. But again, Dean is startled. No one has surprised him like this in — years, now that he considers it. He’d started to regard himself as sort of jaded, but maybe he’s not after all.

He looks back, over his shoulder. The priest’s profile is black against the glare of a streetlight, and Dean can’t tell whether he’s smiling or grave-faced.

Back at the table, they’re waiting for the priest to return and John is saying, “I don’t know why any man in his right mind would choose that kind of life.”

“I think it’s kind of noble,” Mary replies.

“Serving a higher power? Definitely,” Sam agrees.

“I’m surprised they let him out with the… dog collar,” John grumbles.

Ruby says, “Did you know they’re not even allowed to _masturbate_?” Which is _not_ something Dean needs to contemplate, especially not when Castiel is back (damn he moves quietly) with the cold air clinging to him as he sits down next to Dean.

“Father, did you always know you would go into the priesthood?” Sam asks politely.

“There was a family expectation, yes.”

“You don’t make your own choices about your life?” Dean asks.

Castiel glances at him. “Do you?”

Perhaps sensing something like what happens when a piece of quartz and obsidian are struck together, Mary interrupts, “Well, we’re just so excited to have you preside over the ceremony and to get to know you in a personal kind of way, instead of just a spiritual one.”

“Is this normal? Going to a dinner with churchgoers?” Ruby asks.

“Not really. But this is my first wedding— or rather, vow renewal. And I’m new to the parish. And I guess I’m quite lonely.” Again, Castiel seems unconcerned with how his words will make him be perceived or judged. Dean doesn’t know if this is deeply courageous or just deeply stupid.

“Are you a real priest?” he asks, because he’s always been a cynic. He can’t quite believe that a man of the cloth would be so young or so—

“Yes,” Castiel says. He tilts his head in amusement.

Then their meal arrives, and Mary’s steak isn’t sufficiently bloody (though of course when the waitress asks how they like their food, she beams and says it’s _delicious_ ), and the priest is surprisingly ravenous, and everyone gives Sam shit for ordering a goddamn salad. Dean cleans his plate and goes for a third cigarette. After a minute that feels carefully calculated, Mary joins him in the alleyway.

“Can I have one?” she asks. Dean resists the urge to remind her that she was just scolding him for the habit not an hour ago. He just holds the pack of Marlboro Reds out to her.

“Don’t tell your father,” Mary says.

“Of course.”

Silence, just the sound of stars dying and always, always the traffic. Then— “This is nice, isn’t it? All of us together again.”

Dean nods.

“I wanted to give you something.” Mary reaches into her pocket and hands him an envelope.

“Mom, I wasn’t lying when I said the shop is doing well. Bobby’s teaching me, I’m not _that_ much of a fuck-up—”

“I know. I know! This is… something else.”

Mary smokes like a fiend, inhaling even more deeply than Dean. She pats him on the cheek, and Dean struggles not to lean into it. He disciplines himself. He’ll take what he can get and nothing more. “That’s my boy,” Mary murmurs, and then she’s gone.

A minute later, Dean follows her and that’s when he recognizes the short, dark-haired woman at the bar (out of sight of his family’s table), even with her back to him. He says to Ruby, “Did you tell Sam you were changing your tampon?”

Ruby turns around to glower at him. “I don’t know. Are you changing yours?”

Dean jerks his chin in the direction of the empty shot glass in her hand. “So much for being supportive.”

Ruby doesn’t even have the decency to act ashamed. “Anyone ever tell you that you’re awfully self-righteous, Dean?”

Then she puts down the empty glass and strides back to the table, where Sam is in fervent discussion with Castiel about the importance of daily prayer. Perspicacious as ever, Sam immediately notices the envelop in Dean’s hand. “What’s that?”

“Nothin’.”

Sam’s irritating-younger-sibling instinct, now bolstered by four years of pre-law, kicks in: “Seriously, what is it? You’ve been quiet all evening—”

“What do you want me to say?”

“Anything! Tell what’s in the envelope.”

“I don’t know. Just a gift from Mom.”

“I didn’t know about any gift,” John interjects. Mary drains the contents of her wineglass and wearily wipes her mouth with the back of her hand when she’s done.

“Open it,” Ruby encourages, fucking demon that she is. Sam echoes: “Yeah, open it, Dean.” And now the entire table, including the priest, is scrutinizing Dean has he fumbles to tear open the envelope. He reads the contents of what’s inside with dismay.

“Well, what is it?” John demands.

“A coupon for a free therapy session.”

Dean crumples the piece of paper in his fist as Sam grimaces and Ruby stifles a laugh and John regards him with the worst kind of disappointment and Mary sighs: “It was meant to be a… private kind of present. A bedroom present.”

“What the hell is a bedroom present?”

“The kind of present you open alone. In your bedroom.”

“All of my presents are bedroom presents,” Ruby says.

Then Castiel pleasantly adds, “I think it’s nice. I’d kill for a free therapy session.”

Dean is trying to figure out how to turn off the metaphoric flashing neon sign announcing him as the designated family fuck-up when John growls, “I don’t understand your generation’s obsession with navel-gazing. Why do you need to _talk_ about everything? What happened to a stiff upper lip? Someone pisses you off, you settle it with them or you go out and, I don’t know— shoot something. That’s how I was raised.”

“You’re right,” Dean says, just to pacify him, but then Sam snaps: “Sure, Dad, _that’s_ healthy.”

Goddamnit.

“It’s sure as hell cheaper than paying someone to bitch and moan and cry about your feelings,” John says.

“You know, this is exactly why I got the hell out of here. We shouldn’t have to repress everything and repeat _your_ mistakes—”

Dean wants to defend himself, and his father, by explaining that no one is _repressing_ anything. He’s just not talking about shit, or thinking about it. But it’s no use. John’s face and neck are flushed the color of raw meat and Sam’s chin is jutting up in that familiar defiant angle. John says, “You should show me respect, boy."

“You should earn it.”

His father’s chair scrapes discordant against the floor as John rises from his chair. Sam stands up too, and Dean is moving instinctive as his shadow. Because John’s hand is flexing in a fist, and Sam can rebel and run away to California and grow so tall that his shoulders brush the blue sky, but he’s still Dean’s little brother. He stands between Sam and John, like he always does.

“I don’t know where I went wrong with you,” John says mournfully, the insult traveling like a bullet past Dean’s tense shoulders.

Sam laughs. “Thank God you did.”

Dean doesn’t know who swings first. It doesn’t matter, really, at least not as much as the pain blooming in his jaw, then his nose, and the blood dripping down his mouth a moment later. He stumbles backward, unfortunately, into the path of the waitress, and he hears the familiar sickening crack of bone against bone. Now the waitress is bleeding too. Mary’s struggling to pull her husband back; Ruby and Castiel are both wide-eyed and silent; Sam and John are still hollering holy hell at each other. The entire restaurant is rapt at the spectacle of the Winchester Dysfunction Pyrotechnics Extravaganza.

Then John is storming out of the restaurant, Mary is trying to convince the manager not to call the police, Sam is apologizing, and the priest is reaching out to Dean. Dean didn’t flinch when the punch landed but he does when Castiel tries to touch the bruise with such gentleness.

“Talk about intricate rituals,” Ruby says. And Dean has no idea what the fuck that’s supposed to even mean, but he can tell from that Ruby mutters the word out of the corner of her smirking mouth that it’s nothing good. So who can blame him for (accurately) calling her a bitch?

Ruby tosses her water with goddamned lemon in Dean’s face. Sam doesn’t even defend him, only says, “Dean you can’t just go around calling every woman you disagree with a bitch!”

“Fine, then. Ruby, you’re a son of a bitch.”

“That’s worse.”

Now Mary is shouting at them— she may play along with her forced sainthood when it suits her, but she knows how to yell when she goddamn wants to— that, _“Jesus fucking Christ, do you boys need to do this shit every time we try to go someplace nice?”_

And the priest is wincing at the blasphemy of it all.

*

Dean feels his immortal soul ascend out of his mortal flesh when he exits the men’s bathroom and finds Castiel standing _right there._ “Why are you still here?” he asks, maybe a little too gruff.

“I wanted to see if you were all right.”

Castiel hands him a crumpled napkin with an address scrawled on it.“The church,” he explains, almost bashful. “If you ever need someone to talk to.”

Dean shoves the napkin into the pocket of his jacket, alongside the goddamn therapy coupon. Why does everyone want to _talk_ all the sudden? Sam talked about his feelings and look where that had gotten them. “I’m pretty sure that at this point, if I stepped on hollowed ground, I’d like, spontaneously combust.”

Castiel doesn’t say anything.

“No disrespect, of course, Father,” Dean adds, very disrespectfully.

For the first time that night, Cas grins. And it may be rusty, but it’s true. “Well, whatever you decide, I’ll be there. I’m… always there.”

Dean can feel a drop of water slip down his face, over his mouth, and he watches Cas’ eyes subtly, but unmistakably, track the motion. Suddenly Dean realizes that if the circumstances were in any way altered, he’d be asking this man to go home with him. Or maybe not. Maybe they’d make it as far as the parking lot. Even the alleyway would suffice.

*

He can tell immediately that it’s Sam’s silhouette waiting beside the Impala, because Sam is a fucking giant.

“Where’s Ruby?” Dean alls out as he crosses the parking lot. Perhaps that’s a little mean. But Dean’s face aches as he smiles, and he figures that he deserves to be a lot mean if he wants to be.

“She’s driving back to the hotel on her own,” Sam says. “I know tonight was… tense. But I promise, she’s really amazing when you get to know her.”

Dean scoffs and unlocks the Impala.

Once he’s back in the driver’s seat, and Sam is sitting shotgun again, and the highway is infinite ahead of them, the past four years and two thousand miles and Ruby’s bitchiness or son-of-a-bitchiness and Dean’s ever-present ache don’t matter. The only thing that matters is this: his brother was gone. Dean missed him. And now he’s back.

Still, he nearly swerves into the opposite lane and fucking kills them both when Sam nonchalantly says, “Don’t fuck the priest.”

“Sorry, _what_?”

“Don’t fuck the priest,” Sam enunciates.

“I have no idea what the hell you’re talkin’ about. I don’t—”

“Okay, so this is going to be one of those conversations where we both pretend to be blind and deaf and stupid?”

Dean white-knuckle grips the steering wheel. “Nobody’s pretending anything.”

Sam is silent.

“I’m not going to— I’m not _that_ much of a heathen.”

“Sure, Dean.”

The thing is, for once he’s not lying. Dean knows he’s going to hell. That’s a certitude. He deserves it. It’ll be for the aforementioned blasphemy, lying, bar fights, gambling, coveting, violence, masturbation, stealing, sex, drugs, rock ’n roll, sodomy, taking the Lord’s name in vain, all of it.

But not for this.


End file.
